


the end of all the endings

by HeartonFire



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bookstore, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fluff, Frank hangs out with the Liebermans, Frank's family died in a car accident, Karen owns a bookstore, Leo likes to read
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-05 23:19:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15181544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeartonFire/pseuds/HeartonFire
Summary: Frank is spending the day with Leo and she insists on going into the White Rose Bookstore. Inside, they meet a woman named Karen, who knows all about books and quickly becomes Leo's hero. When she offers to let them stay for a young adult reading hour, Leo begs Frank to stay, and it turns into a weekly engagement. Frank can't say he minds.AU where Karen owns a bookstore and Frank's family died in a car accident, instead of an ambush.





	1. your eyes look like coming home

“Come on, Frank!” Leo squealed, tugging at his hand. “You said we’d go to the bookstore today!”

Frank smiled. He wasn’t one to be dragged anywhere he didn’t want to go, but he indulged her and her rush to get to this store. There wasn’t much he wouldn’t allow from that little girl.

He let her drag him into the little bookstore on the corner. He glanced up at the sign for the _White Rose Bookstore_ and followed her inside. A little bell tinkled as the door opened and the woman behind the counter looked up. Frank stopped in his tracks, staring at her.

She was tall, slim, with blonde hair that fell over her shoulders loosely. But it was her eyes that really stunned him. Blue eyes, the color of the sky on a spring morning, caught him and wouldn’t let him go.

“Frank,” Leo whined. “Come on.” She pulled him along, towards the new releases display stacked with shiny new paperbacks.

“Looking for anything in particular?” the woman behind the counter said, smiling at the pair of them. 

Leo shook her head, bounding over to look at the first book she could reach.

Frank hung back a little, pretending to look at all the books on the shelves, but not really seeing any of them. He saw movement out of the corner of his eye and watched the blonde woman approach Leo.

“Hi, I’m Karen.”

“Leo.” She wasn’t really looking at Karen, eyes tracing over the words on the back of one of the books.

“What kind of books do you like?” she said pleasantly.

“All kinds,” Leo said. “My favorite is _Life of Pi_.”

Karen thought for a moment. “Have you read _The Book Thief_?” Leo shook her head. Karen strode over to a shelf and pulled a book down, handing it to Leo. “It’s not exactly the same kind of book, but there’s definitely some magical elements in it that I think you’ll enjoy. Do you like history?”

Leo nodded, flipping the book over and reading the back. When she finished reading the description, she blinked up at Karen like she was a magician. “Cool.”

Karen’s smile widened. “You know what else is pretty cool?” Leo shook her head. “For this book, we’re going to have a reading in about an hour.” She held up another book. “It’s about a girl staying alive and getting revenge after getting stranded in the woods. It just came out and it’s really good.” She leaned closer, secretive smirk on her face. “And there’s a dog in it.”

“ _I Am Still Alive_ ,” Frank muttered to himself, reading the words on the cover. He smirked a little. If only she knew how ironic that title was.

“You’re going to read it to people?”

Karen nodded. “We’re just starting this book, so if you come back next week, you’ll get to hear the next part.”

Leo turned to Frank, eyes wide. “Can we stay?”

“Sure. We’ll come back for that.” He grinned at the look on her face. He took both books out of her hands and moved toward the register. Karen returned to stand behind the counter and rang up the books.

“Anything for you?” she asked, placing the two books in a brown paper bag.

“Oh, uh, no. I don’t think so.” Frank took the bag, hand brushing hers as she passed it to him. He caught a slight scent of flowers and citrus and felt a shiver race down his spine.

“You sure?”

“We’ll be back in a bit. Maybe I’ll change my mind by then.”

Karen nodded. “I hope so.”

Leo was looking between the two of them curiously, and Frank needed some air. He took the bag, nodded at Karen, and headed for the door. He didn’t look back, but he could feel Karen’s eyes on him as he left.

“So, we’ll come back?” Leo said, taking the bag from him and swinging it by her side.

“Sure. We’ll come back. Let’s get something to eat first, though.”

He took her down the street to a little café he thought she would like, with its delicate little pastries and real ceramic teacups. He hoped some food would settle the uneasy feeling in his stomach. It had been a long time since he had had this particular feeling and he wasn’t sure exactly how to place it.

He ordered a black coffee and a ham sandwich for himself, an iced tea and a strawberry Danish for Leo. She ate her pastry so fast he was half afraid she would choke, bouncing her feet impatiently while she waited for him to finish.

“We’re going to be late.”

“We’re not going to be late.” Frank sipped his coffee, trying not to smile at the irritation tracing over Leo’s young face. She looked just like her dad when she was like that.

“Come on,” she whined, slurping the last drops of her iced tea through the ice at the bottom of the cup.

“Can I enjoy my lunch?” he said, and she sighed, folding her arms over her chest. It was nice, he decided, that David and Sarah let him spend time with the kids like this. It was almost like having his family back. The thought stabbed at him, made his heart thump a little painfully, but it didn’t hurt as much as it used to.

When he had just placed the last bite of sandwich in his mouth, Leo grabbed his arm and dragged him out of the café as fast as her legs would carry her. She burst into the bookstore and dropped the bag in her hurry to get to the back of the store to listen to Karen read. Frank chuckled and picked it up, following her towards the group of kids forming a circle around Karen, who sat on a stool. Her long skirt pooled at her feet and that smile on her face shone like the sun.

“Welcome to young adult book hour. We’re going to be starting a new book this week, called _I Am Still Alive_ , by Kate Alice Marshall.”

And then, she started to read, voice lilting up and down with the words. She had different voices for different characters and Frank found himself drawn into the fictional world she was weaving.

“Alright, that’s all for today, but come back next week and we’ll read the next few chapters. Thank you all for coming in today!”

The kids clapped and she stood, taking a tiny bow before putting the book back on the display and moving to talk to a mom who had a question for her. Frank watched her easy movements, the way she tossed her hair over her shoulder and talked with her hands. She was getting very animated over something. Probably another book she loved.

“Frank?” Leo said, tugging at his arm.

“Yeah, sweetheart?”

“Can we come back next week?”

Frank smiled. “Sure. I’ll talk to your mom and dad.”

* * *

The next week, he and Leo arrived right on time to join the reading circle. Karen smiled at them as Leo sat down, clutching her copy of the book to her chest.

“Welcome back to young adult reading hour,” she said. “Let’s get back into Jess’ story. In case you missed last week, or if you forgot, can anyone tell us what happened so far in the book?”

Leo’s hand shot into the air before anyone else’s. Karen nodded at her. The words tumbled out of her mouth so fast, Frank almost couldn’t understand what she was saying, but she remembered it all. Every character, every plot point, everything. No wonder, given who her parents were, but it still surprised him every time she showed just how smart she was.

“Thank you, Leo.” Leo beamed for the next hour, hiding it in her book, but sneaking peeks at Karen every so often.

Frank couldn’t help himself, and he got lost in the story again. It was a story he could understand: loss, survival, pain. And, like Karen had said, there was a dog in it. The best stories always have dogs in them.

This time, when she was finished, Karen walked over to him, a curious look on her face.

“You came back.”

“Yeah,” he said, blinking at her. “Yeah, Leo couldn’t wait to come back.”

“She’s a sweet girl. Bright, too.”

“That she is.”

Speaking of Leo, she came over to them, grinning at Karen. “What happens next?” she said.

“You can read ahead if you want,” Karen said, laughing lightly. “You have the book right there.”

“I don’t want to spoil it for myself.”

“But you want me to spoil it for you?”

Leo shook her head, then nodded, then shrugged. “I just want to know!”

“Then I guess you and your dad will have to come back next week.”

Frank froze. Leo’s eyes went wide.

“I’m not,” Frank said quickly.

“He’s not,” Leo mumbled, looking down.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Karen said, hand over her mouth. “I just thought…”

“No, it’s okay. I’m a friend of her family. I’m Frank.”

“Karen.” She was blushing, red tinting her skin all the way up to her blonde hairline.

“I guess we’ll see you next week.” Hand on Leo’s shoulder, he steered her towards the door.

“Haven’t changed your mind about a book for yourself, then?” she called after him.

Frank looked back at her. He couldn’t read her face. “Not yet. What do you recommend?”

“Let me think about it,” Karen said. “I’ll let you know next week.”


	2. no place i'd rather be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Leo unavailable, Frank has to decide if he's still going to the bookstore without her. How badly does he want those book recommendations? Is it even really about the books now?

Unfortunately, the next week was David’s mother’s birthday, so Leo was unavailable for story hour. Frank tried not to reveal how disappointed he was when David told him, but it twisted in his gut like a knife.

“Just go by yourself,” David said. “If it’s that important to you.”

“It’s not,” Frank protested. “Not really.”

“Then don’t. She’ll probably want to go next week, if that works.”

“Sure. Yeah.”

He hung up the phone and twisted it in his hands. If he happened to go for a walk, and he happened to go by the bookstore, that wasn’t crazy, right? He could go after story hour even. He didn’t need to be there for that.

Almost against his will, his feet still carried him to the store in time to circle up and listen to Karen read for an hour. She made everything so vivid, it was like watching a movie unfold in front of his eyes. She had such passion in her expression and her voice, and it was easy to see how she managed to get a dozen pre-teens and teenagers into her store every week to read with her.

When she finished, she spoke gently to a couple of girls who approached her for recommendations of other books they might like. They looked at her like she was their hero. Frank smiled and thought about leaving before she saw him, but if he did that, what was the point of coming in at all?

After she had finished talking to the girls, Karen strode over to Frank, soft smile on her lips.

“No Leo today?”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Couldn’t make it.”

“But you did.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

“Really wanted that book recommendation, huh?”

“Guess so.” He shrugged, looking down at his feet. Her blue eyes were too much for him all at once, focused on him like this.

“Well, I thought about it, and I think I have a couple of ideas for you.”

“Oh yeah?” He looked up at her and she was still smiling, eyes bright as she looked at him.

“Yeah.” She cleared her throat and he saw her fingers twisting around each other. “Yeah, but it would help to know what you usually like to read.”

Frank grinned. “Might have been a good place to start.”

“Maybe.”

One of the parents from story hour coughed next to them and Frank realized with a jolt that there were still other people in the store.

“I’ll be right with you,” Karen said pleasantly. “Listen, maybe it would be easier to talk about this over coffee?”

“Sure thing,” Frank said. “There’s a café down the street. Lola’s, I think it’s called.”

“I know it well. I close up around four today.”

“Then I’ll see you around four.”

She turned to speak to the mom who was looking for her attention and Frank headed for the door. He looked back and saw Karen watching him. She blushed and focused back on the woman talking to her. Frank grinned to himself and made his way through the crowded streets to the café to wait for four o’clock.

* * *

At four, Frank had a crazy moment of thinking Karen wouldn’t show. Maybe she got caught up with something. Maybe she forgot. Maybe she was just being polite.

“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered to himself as he took a sip of coffee. She had to close up. She wouldn’t be out right away. It didn’t mean anything. It was her idea.

He was still trying to give himself a pep talk as the door to the café opened and Karen stepped inside, hair slightly tousled from the wind. She glanced around the room, eyes finally stopping on Frank’s face. The way her face lit up when she saw him waiting for her made the wait worth it.

“I’m just going to get a coffee,” she said, when he was half standing to greet her. He sat back down and watched as she ordered her drink and came to sit with him. Clasping her hands around the mug, she smiled at him as she sat down. “Sorry I’m a few minutes late.”

“No problem,” he said, waving his hand at her. “What do you have there?” He nodded at the bag she had put down beside her.

“Oh, just some book ideas for you.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said, but she shook her head.

“It’s no trouble. Anything to get a loyal customer, right?”

Frank grinned. “Fair enough. So, what do you have in there?”

Karen’s smile widened. “I thought you were going to tell me what kinds of books you like?”

“I could do that. Or we can see if your intuition is as good as you think.”

“Fine.” She pulled out a stack of books and placed them on the table with a thump. “First, I brought _Into Thin Air_. It’s about a group of climbers on the deadliest day in Everest history.”

Frank nodded as she set it down on the table. “Sounds interesting.”

“Then, I have a couple of classics I think you might enjoy. _Moby Dick_ ,” she said, placing it on top of the first book. “And _A Farewell to Arms_.”

“I’ve read _Moby Dick_ before, but that other one sounds like something I’d like.”

“I figured from your posture you’re ex-military.”

“Very perceptive.”

She blushed and held up one final book. “I brought this one because it’s one of my favorites, and I think everyone could use some Jane Austen in their lives.”

“ _Pride and Prejudice?_ ” Frank said quietly, raising one eyebrow. “Isn’t that like, a girly book?”

Karen scoffed. “It doesn’t have to be. It has romance, sure, but it’s also about class and reputation and people misunderstanding who you are based on first impressions.”

“That happen to you often?”

“No,” she said, shaking her curtain of hair off her face. “What you see is what you get with me.”

“I like that,” Frank said. He looked down at his hands, callused and rough and scarred.

“What about you?” Karen was looking over the rim of her mug at him, eyes scanning his face.

“What about me?”

“You know plenty about me already. I feel like I don’t know anything about you. How did you meet Leo’s family?”

Frank laughed. “That’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

Taking a deep breath, Frank started at the beginning. “Like you said, I was a Marine. Came back from Afghanistan and wanted to have a quiet life with my wife and kids.” Karen tensed a little, knuckles whitening around her cup. “Anyway, we were doing it, for a while. But then, we were driving up to the mountains around Christmas. Get away from the city, you know?” Karen nodded. Frank sniffed, looking down at his coffee. “Some dumbass drunk driver chose that day to drive the wrong way on the road up to the mountains. I swerved to miss him and we slid off the road. Car rolled four times, they told me after.” Karen gasped, one hand covering her mouth and the other falling to rest on his forearm. He looked down at it, trying to ignore the heat sparking up his arm and into the rest of his body. “They didn’t make it. I did.”

“Oh, Frank, I’m so sorry.”

He jerked a nod and plowed ahead. He wasn’t sure why he was telling her his life story, but it just kept pouring out of him. “Anyway, after that, I kind of fell apart. Drank, fought, did anything I could to, I don’t know,” he said, running a hand over his short hair.

“Fill the emptiness?” Karen offered, and he met her gaze. Her blue eyes were filled with tears, and she blinked hard. “I know the feeling. My brother died in an accident when I was eighteen. No one really understands, do they?”

Frank shook his head. “No. They really don’t.” She squeezed his arm. “So, then, after I got my head back on a little straighter, I got a job, working construction.” Karen nodded. “I was working on this house in a pretty nice neighborhood. They needed a new roof.” She nodded again. “One day, I was on my lunch break, and this kid runs by. I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but he had this big old backpack on and he was running as hard as he could. Maybe eight, nine years old. So, I called after him and he stopped running. He came back and told me he was running away from home. I asked him why and he said his Dad wouldn’t let him take karate. Said it was too aggressive.” Karen covered a soft laugh with her hand. “I convinced him to let me walk him home so I could talk to his folks. They invited me in for dinner, and the rest is history.”

“Did they let him do karate?”

“We eventually talked them into it, Zach and me.”

Karen smiled again. “And I bet he loved it.”

“Nah,” Frank said, shaking his head. “Did it for a month and then quit. But they let me keep coming by anyway.”

“Leo obviously adores you.”  
“She’s a good kid.”

He sipped his coffee again and Karen watched him carefully. “So, besides saving runaways and taking kids to bookstores, what else do you do?”

“Still working construction,” he said, looking down again. He wasn’t ashamed, exactly. It was good work, kept him busy, kept the ghosts away. But it wasn’t exactly on the level of owning a bookstore and getting kids to love reading.

“You like it?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

“Good.”  
“You like what you do?” It was a stupid question, and he knew it, but he didn’t want the attention to stay on him like this. Those blue eyes were too much.

“Yeah,” Karen said thoughtfully. “I worked in the store when I got to the city and then the owner left it to me when she retired. Felt like I should keep it going.” She sighed. “I sometimes wonder if I should be doing something more.”

“More?”

She looked out the window, biting her lip. “I always wanted to be a writer,” she admitted, so quietly Frank almost couldn’t hear her over the clatter of cups and chatter of people.

“So, why don’t you do it?” Karen scoffed, but Frank shook his head. “I mean it. You got all these kids coming in to listen to you. If you wrote a book, I bet they would love it.”

She shrugged. “I read other people’s words to them.”

“But you do it so well,” Frank insisted. He lay his hand over hers and squeezed it. “I mean it. You write a book, and all those kids would be all over it. I can see it.”

She looked down, hair falling over her face. Frank tried to peer through the curtain to see her, get through to her, but she wouldn’t meet his eyes.

When she lifted her head, she sniffed and the tears that she had blinked back during his story were now tracing down her face. Frank didn’t even think about it, lifting one thumb to brush them away. Karen’s eyes fluttered closed, long lashes falling to her cheeks and she took a shaky breath.

“Who are you, Frank?” she whispered after a moment.

“What?” He drew his hand back in surprise.

She opened her eyes, those beautiful eyes, and said it again. “Who are you?”

“You know that already. Frank. Castle, if you wanted my last name.”

She laughed, wiping the rest of the tears away. “Karen Page. I don’t know where you came from, or how you ended up in my store, but I’m really glad you did.”

“Me too.” Frank was blushing now. “Listen, I don’t really know how to do this anymore.” He chuckled. “I don’t know if I ever really knew how to do this, but would you like to get dinner sometime?”

Karen’s smile broke across her face like a sunrise. “I’d like that.”

* * *

 

**One year later…**

“Nervous?” Frank said, kissing Karen’s temple. She nodded, and he squeezed her to his side. “Don’t blame you.”

“That’s not what you’re supposed to say!” she said, pushing away from him. “You’re supposed to tell me this is what I’ve been working for all this time, and that it’s all going to go fine.”

“Yeah, but see, you already know that.”

Karen laughed and Frank pulled her towards him. She tilted her head towards him and he placed a gentle kiss on her lips. He knew if he smudged her lipstick, he would really be in for it. The touch of her soft skin made him almost want to risk it.

“Go get ‘em,” he murmured in her ear before releasing her. She nodded and smiled at him, that smile she saved only for him. The real one, the one that lit up her face and made him forget anything but her.

He watched as she walked out into her store, the one she had inherited and built up, to a cheering crowd of people waiting to get copies of her book.

“Thank you all for coming,” she said, once they quieted down. “I’m very excited to be sharing my book with all of you, and I appreciate all of your support. The book is called _Hero_ , and I will be reading a short excerpt before the signing begins.”

Frank watched her read to the gathered crowd, and it was like the first time he had listened to her all over again. He had already read the manuscript, helped her work out some of the details, watched her work on it until dawn was breaking almost every night, but to hear her read it aloud, with all the passion and the excitement she always had for books she loved, was like a revelation. When she finished reading, Frank could see tears shining in her eyes at the sound of the applause.

People lined up out the door to get their copies signed, and Frank could see how exhausted and exhilarated Karen was by the end of it. She closed the door behind the last fan and sank back against it as she locked it.

Frank took her in his arms and her whole body relaxed. One of his hands tangled in her hair and the other fell to the middle of her back.

“Thank you for being here,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

“No place I’d rather be.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I appreciate all the kudos and comments! This fandom is the best and I am so inspired by all of you. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! The Kastle fic/art exchange inspired me to write this AU. It's not far from the canon in some respects, but I just wanted Frank and Karen to have a soft universe to live in, instead of the hard, unforgiving one they usually have to work with.


End file.
